I Tied My Own Shoes Once...

... It was an overrated experience.


Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

Rating ... D+ (22)

If anyone ever buckles down and actually adapts a decent video game into a decent movie, by this point you have to wonder if audiences will even notice. Cinematically speaking, video games are inextricably linked to poor quality; everything from Tomb Raider to D.O.A. to Van Damme's original Street Fighter movie have made sure of that. A Street Fighter installment in name only, Legend of Chun-Li doesn't feature any particulars from any Street Fighter game beyond character names, and it can't even get that right. (The major players are so bland and interchangeable here, in what must have been some sort of on-set, actor masculinity scuffle three characters literally traded names in the film's port to American theatres. Apparently someone balked how feminine Neal McDonough's suave, mannered Vega was as lead villain so his character became Bison; Michael Clarke Duncan's brutish henchman ran into the same problem so the name Balrog was taken from a random crony, who received the leftover Vega.)

Street Fighter begins with Chun-Li's epic voiceover narration as she clumsily summarizes her life story in about five minutes and ends with more of the same where the character's foreseeable progression merely affirms revenge as a part of the healing process. These segments bookend her battle against notorious corporate thief Bison (Vega) and his irritating, irrelevant personal bodyguards Balrog (Bison) and Vega (Balrog). Both Chun-Li and Interpol agents Maya and Charlie (played with insufferable badass swagger by Chris Klein) marvel at Bison's uncanny ability to stay under the radar, yet have no difficulty intercepting his company's shipments as a repeated and reliable way to square off against him. Chun-Li studies under a master by the name of Gen whose unexplained chi / chakra / haduken power / dragon punch + A / mystical energy somehow enables her to defeat Bison in hand-to-hand combat, even though the film deliberately states his only weakness is his daughter's livelihood, as she is the vessel for his eternal soul. Or something. The point is, shit happens, you get to witness copious amounts of lame cut-scene combat, the culmination of which is neither coherent nor meaningful filmmaking, yet Legend of of Chun-Li promises a sequel anyway. Apparently this is all very cathartic for Chun-Li, who somehow becomes emblematic of slum solidarity (Bison's only discernable faux-pas is his gentrification - booting poor people out of their subsidized housing so he can make a chunk of change by selling them) despite her background of obvious privilege. Nevertheless, the film excels in the idiotic dialogue department, nearly rivaling the likes of fellow video game adaptations The Yu-Gi-Oh Movie and House of the Dead. (My personal favorite, a menacing threat from Bison: "Your father has been the milk of my business ... but even milk has an expiration date!") Now that we've stooped this low, Legend of Chun-Li isn't just Street Fighter in name only - it's a movie in name only.


Dance Flick (2009)

Rating ... C (38)

Likely the best bad movie to emanate from a Wayans and their canon of spectacularly tacky movies since Scary Movie, Dance Flick represents a marriage between early outputs like I'm Gonna Git You Sucka that lampooned America's perception of black culture with their later, lazier efforts like 2006's scatology-centric Little Man. Chock full of cred-establishing dance movie references including Step Up, Flashdance, Save the Last Dance, Take the Lead, and Honey (as well as a healthy dose of largely irrelevant jibes worthy of the ... Movie franchise directed at Black Snake Moan, Little Miss Sunshine, Catwoman, Ray, and Twilight), director Damien Wayans and his platoon / extended family of writers cheerfully take aim at how dance battling has been impugned and conformed into a Hollywood product by studio tripe such as You Got Served. As misfortune would have it Dance Flick's best scenes are as ingenious as they are infrequent; during his class lecture Marlon Wayans as Mr. Moody spoofs black actors that accept stereotypical roles, and the scene registers because Wayans understands how cultural dignity has been exchanged for financial compensation. Likewise, in the film's occasional digs at community college, tap water, and Shawn Wayans (there's one around every corner, no kidding) as Baby Daddy who offers to "pick up" his kid for the weekend - he then proceeds to literally pick up the child before setting him back down and exiting hastily - effectively satirize the dilemma of adolescents living in black neighborhoods to succumb to peer pressure and leave school or strive for higher education, a conceit repetitively portrayed in more heavy-handed films like Menace II Society and Jungle Fever whose sensationalist agendas kept suspicious tabulation of this progress (or lack thereof) via the market equilibrium price of dick-sucking. The problem remains, however, that the Wayans have never really polished their storytelling chops, and though Dance Flick pokes fun at lame narrative templates, the fact remains it follows a lame narrative template itself. This template consists of a lukewarm mishmash of two distinct elements - corny dance movie clichés and full-blown absurdism. In all honesty there's no reason a hybrid approach wouldn't suffice but the Wayans aren't exactly putting their best foot forward; aside from their usual allotment of fratboy humor the story is often subverted by a running gag concerning an unfunny creditor-cum-gang-boss in a fat suit named Sugar Bear, a figure whose significance is never explained or elaborated. The climactic dance battle and abrupt ending directly contend the white-black amalgam of style shown in contemporary dance films, and there's undeniable energy to this fervent rebuttal against the unification of races; now if only the Wayans would provide equal measure to the notion that audiences are not similarly unified by an affinity for trivial movie shout-outs and witless vulgarity.


A Christmas Carol (2009)

Rating ... D (11)

The Many Cameras of Robert Zemeckis, I long to count thee. We have #1 Blithe, Soaring, Christmas is a Wonderful Time Cam for past and present, and the similarly active #2 Fleeing From Shadowy Demons, You're Gonna Die (If You Keep Up This Behavior!) Cam for the grim future. For connective tissue, there's crass moralizing and lesson-learning for all with #3 Errol Morris Interrotron Inspired Talk Directly to the Audience Cam and #4 Stationary, Introspective, What Really Matters Cam on hand to capture Scrooge's change of heart. Evidentally there was no cinematographic method of depicting the film's repulsive central tenet about charity as the only route to fulfillment; that particular burden was sluffed off upon the story, if that's what you wish to call ninety minutes of pure didacticism, a whirligig torture chamber where Scrooge is repeatedly chastised for his miserly behavior (even when penitent), shown again and again visions of relatives scoffing at him behind his back and wishing him ill will, or expressing apathy after his passing, offering to attend his funeral for a free meal. Of course these patronizing glimpses are all basically the same scene, reiterations intent on changing Scrooge's demeanor from Wrong to Right, but to make matters worse Zemeckis is basically preaching to the diegetic choir. Scrooge scarcely delivers his trademark speech on surplus population (his words are later used for cheap, you-got-served comeuppance by the Ghost of Christmas Present) before he's whisked away on his journey, shedding a tear for his less cynical self in the past, grinning at children playing on rooftops in the present, and welcoming reproach from the Ghost of Christmas Future before he even arrives. ("It will do me good," Scrooge opines.) Inspiration is sporadic in the story's umpteenth version, isolated almost wholly to a scene where Scrooge rids himself of the Ghost of Christmas Past by slamming the specter's elongated dunce hat over his entire body, only seconds later to find the entity inexplicably morphed into some sort of rocket which blasts him into the sky - a clever transitional scene, yet still one whose "or else!" mentality condescends to Scrooge's existence, which it considers lonely and bereft of joy. "Why do you condemn the honest pursuit of substance?" asks Scrooge's former self - the only line that acknowledges a position contrary to the film's own, which is promptly smothered with scene after scene of counterpoint. By the risible conclusion, Scrooge has been sufficiently blackmailed by emotion, not only berated in the present that Tiny Tim will die (and it's HIS fault) but also shown yet again in the future that Tiny Tim has in fact died, and finally shown his own corpse, followed by his own tombstone, followed by dangling from the brim of a sinkhole leading directly to Hell. Maybe he gets the point? If not, his fellow merrymakers - after much hemming and hawing - have found it in their hearts to "feel sorry" for his plight; according to Zemeckis's monstrosity, nothing says Christmas like celebrating the hive mind and browbeating everyone to join in.


Up in the Air (2009)

Rating ... C (37)

I see shades of two superior films at work here. The first is Lost in Translation, which had similar age groups grappling with fulfillment in and out of the workplace; whereas that film gradually abandoned curdled typecasting ("lip my stocking!") throughout the story, Up in the Air only further embraces stereotyping as though it wasn't the hack director's fallback measure. Clooney's character is a summation of cheap, fortune-cookie proverbs ("what's in your backpack?") and cheerfully owns up to (positively) stereotyping Asians early in the film; Reitman sticks to the mold by allowing the narrative to slide into clichéd drivel, yet another slam at bachelorhood and lone wolf ethos in favor of accumulating brownie points with breadbasket, nest-egg trumpeting. The second likeness is The Devil Wears Prada, more specifically the Streep-Hathaway relationship noticeable in Clooney-Kendrick, even down to the last scene with the letter of recommendation. In Devil the antagonism between the leads represented more than workplace adversity and self betterment; Hathaway calls it quits with the company because though she demonstrates the capability, she makes a deliberate decision not to allow her career success to come at the expense of others. Streep is essentially the Clooney role from Up in the Air - looking out for number one - but Devil deals her a fair hand, refraining from disparaging her choices but poignantly allowing her to realize that Hathaway was a kindred spirit along a different path. By contrast, after Up in the Air's threesome sustain interesting chit-chat after Kendrick's break-up the film sends them scuttling back to the household and strives for last-ditch tragedy when Clooney finds Farmiga with a Hestia all her own; thus the letter of recommendation is his only recourse to obtain (I reference and reuse this diction from Michael Sicinski because he perfectly hit the nail on the head) "yuppie asshole redemption." In other news, Up in the Air succumbs to Big Important Moments, not only with its simplistic "real people" inserts (think He's Just Not That Into You, and here's a quote - "without my friends and family, I wouldn't have made it!") but also the Danny McBride character's half-assed cold feet bellyaching - "what's the point [of getting married]?" - as if he was grappling with THE question of our contemporary existence. Spare me, please. Up in the Air has the same subtextual trapping as the "these walls of metal and glass" segment of Crash, and all Reitman has proved here is that he's savvier than Hammer Time Haggis. Some accomplishment.


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